While working on my Master’s of Public Health through Walden University, part of my practicum was with the Office of Emergency Preparedness in San Luis Obispo County Department of Public Health (SLODPH). All Public Health Departments and FEMA recommend that families have a disaster kit prepared that will provide 72 hours worth of food and water along with basic supplies in the event of an evacuation, a local disaster, or the need to “shelter in place” if supply chains are cut off. While there is a great deal of information available on these recommendations, I could not find an iOS-based application that provided me with all of the resources that are necessary in an emergency situation. So, I utilized some of the SLODPH materials, FEMA resources, and other research to build the Disaster Prep App.

Disasters can happen at any time, at any place and without warning. In a natural disaster, disease outbreak, terrorist attack or other major emergency, a network of local, regional, stateand federal systems will initiate pre-planned and practiced responses. Beyond the municipal and public health responses, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommend that you and your family prepare to take care of yourselves as much as possible in a disaster.

Downloading the Emergency and Disaster Preparedness Checklist and Guide and filling in your local emergency information is an excellent start. Collecting some basic supplies (not much more than you’d put together for a camping trip) will also provide the basics for you and your family if and when a disaster occurs. Planning for medium and long-term supply chain disruptions that prohibit your ability to access foodand other necessities is also a good strategy in major disasters. Finally, it is important to be able to “shelter in place” – or stay at home or another protected area away from the impacts of the disaster until it is safe to leave.

Climate Change and Peak Oil

In the United States, we use over 20 million barrels of oil per day, over 7 billion barrels per year, importing more than half of this volume from Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and other oil-producing states.
In purchasing this oil from other parts of the world we put billions of dollars per year into the hands of oil shieks, outdated theocratic rulerships, radical Islamic militants, and even terrorists. The pursuit of this oil has many costs, including the billions of American tax dollars spent on a war that is largely political in order to secure our access to this resource. Already unstable, any breakdown in the current oil economy will lead to skyrocketing fuel prices for Americans. Even the experts within the oil industry predict "peak oil", that is, the highest possible global oil production, to come anywhere within the next 10-50 years. After that point the maximum amount of oil that we can pump out of the ground will decline despite the growing demand for oil for energy, plastics, gasoline, jet fuel, and the many other uses for petroleum. This is a second major reason for a fuel cost spike, that will hit our economy terribly, from which we may not ever recover.
A second major global crisis that is intimately intertwined with energy is climate change. The latest data suggests that the polar ice caps are melting even faster than previously predicted, leading to erratic weather patterns, severe droughts and floods, and rising sea levels. If our current energy consumption continues to grow as predicted, we will have set the stage for severe natural disasters displacing millions of people from their homes, killing an unestimateable number of humans and animal species, costing billions of relief dollars, as well as costing more than 5% per year of global economic growth indefinitely. These two issues go hand in hand – our voracious appetite for energy requires the burning of more and more fossil fuels which in turn leads to more of the CO2 emissions that cause global warming. This is not supposition and is not theory. It is fact. There are many resources to support these estimates and projections from leading politicians, economists, climate experts, geologists, and other experts in their fields.
What this means is that this energy crisis will occur within many of our lifetimes and all of our children's lifetimes. We cannot leave the downfall of our civilization and the scarring of our globe as a legacy to our next generation. Do not take the media’s word, or my word for that matter, research it for yourself so you understand the dire position of our current crises.